Lighten up?! Humour, Race, and Da off colour joke of Ali G

He has been called a genius and a disgrace, a truth teller and a bigot, a modern-day Lenny Bruce and a modern-day minstrel. Yet, while there is no lack of opinion concerning the morality of Sacha Baron Cohen's Da Ali G Show, less attention has been paid to how the show's humour may help to explicate the complexities of the relationship between race, subjectivity and comic speech. This article draws on post-structuralist feminist/queer and psychoanalytic theory to examine racialized humour through the lens of Da Ali G Show. Drawing on Judith Butler's writings on performativity and hate speech, I examine the joke as a speech act that may help to produce rather than reflect upon subjectivity. I also use psychoanalytic writing concerning the comic to examine the joke as an expression of both racial and sexual anxiety.